SHAMBHALA SUN MAY 2006
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Native American religious leaders for the
practice of traditional Native American
religions by their present-day adherents.”
Under NAGPRA, some sacred objects
are returned to their tribes, while others
that remain in museums benefit from the
advice of aboriginal elders about how to
store and display the objects. This is not
always a straightforward process.
In Hawaii, one museum returned sa-
cred burial objects to an aboriginal group,
which immediately buried and sealed
them in a cave. Other native groups con-
tested this group’s claim to exclusive right
to rebury the objects, and currently, the
museum is under pressure to force the
unsealing of the cave, the unburial of the
objects, and their return to the museum
until the court battle is settled.
Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, in
close cooperation with members of the Six
Nations Reserve, welcomes the members
of the tribe to come to the museum and
“feed” the Iquoisain, facemasks of their
culture. According to Dan Rahimi, execu-
tive director of gallery development for the
ROM, the feeding ritual involves burning
sweet grass, saying prayers, and offering
corn mush. After that, participants in the
ceremony eat the corn mush. This is quite
a departure for a museum, since food sub-
stances are never allowed in museum stor-
age areas for fear of subsequent insect and
rodent infestation, and of course fire and
smoke of any kind is strictly forbidden. In
order to honor the wishes of the reserve
members and respect the objects in the
way they are meant to be respected, the
masks are “stored with the general collec-
tion and then brought into a specially built
ceremonial room with venting that leads
directly out of the building to allow for
sweet grass to be burned,” says Rahimi.
These examples raise questions about
subtle respect and innate power in sacred
art. If, for example, the Iquoisain were not
fed in the museum, would their power
decrease? Do the Hawaiian burial objects
have power only when sealed in a cave and
not displayed or stored in a museum? Is
there power simply in seeing such an ob-
ject, which would argue for the value of
museum display?